


A bit of perspective

by Eloarei



Series: Day on the Horizon [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Bigotry & Prejudice, Canon-typical wandering, F/M, Gen, Human/Monster Romance, I ship it but they're still just figuring life out, One Shot, Other, Post-Canon, Slice of Life, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:34:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25463311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eloarei/pseuds/Eloarei
Summary: The people in Megaton are wary of the wanderer's companion, so she takes him sightseeing to get away from the townsfolk's suspicious eye.
Relationships: Fawkes & Lone Wanderer, Fawkes/Female Lone Wanderer, Fawkes/Lone Wanderer
Series: Day on the Horizon [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1882009
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	A bit of perspective

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote a little fic about these two the other day [(Day on the horizon)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25249828), and when I was done I realized I still had things to say. So, here's sort of a sequel. It's not super important to read the previous one first; it might become a series (with plot?!), but for now they're just little standalone snippets of LW Addisson's thoughts on her dearest companion. (Well, tied with Dogmeat, maybe, but I don't think either of them would be offended to share the position.)  
> Coherency not guaranteed-- I'm still mostly writing to get out of a rut, and I take the words however they come to me.

She wasn’t sure if it was because she spent a good month on her own before finding Dogmeat, learning to keep a keen ear out for trouble when there was nobody to watch her back, or if she was just naturally aware of her surroundings, but Addisson often heard things she didn’t think were meant for her ears. Or if they _were_ then the speakers were passive-aggressive assholes who deserve their fates.  
  
Which wasn’t to say that Addisson ever confronted them about the things they said. Most of the time, she didn’t. Confrontation was… not really her thing. There was no point in getting into a fight with some Megaton citizen whose name she had heard maybe once. Instead she filed away the criticisms for future use-- reflection, if she thought they were valid; grudges, if not.  
  
But this one was a complicated little bit of gossip. Over the past few months, the snide commentary she’d overheard was usually about her; about the messy way she’d handled that situation with the raiders, or how her unnecessary ‘popularity’ in the Wasteland put them at risk, or how Sims ought to keep a closer eye on her, or how apparently ‘everyone’ in town worshipped her, just for taking care of a few menial chores for people. (Although clearly not _everyone_ loved her, since she still heard shit like this on the regular.) Every so often the rude gossip was about people she considered friends: Moira was a clumsy airhead. They shouldn’t let her keep tinkering unsupervised; Nova was a worthless whore, attracting the wrong sort to town; and that ugly ghoul! Why did Sims let Moriarty keep it?  
  
Times like those, she really considered sending off a warning shot, maybe just nick the brim of someone’s hat. But this wasn’t her town, for all that she lived there. Her friends had made this life for themselves and had put up with the abuse far longer than she. Far be it for her to mess up the delicate balance they had going, to make things awkward when it wasn’t asked for. That sort of interference was why half the people in Megaton weren’t entirely keen on her to begin with.  
  
Fawkes wasn’t a local though. He didn’t have his own life here, built carefully out of what he could scrape together. He didn’t have his own place, his own tenuous connection with the other townsfolk. At best, he was the newcomer’s tentative roommate; at worst, an unwanted guest’s dirty pet. Nobody saw him as truly belonging in Megaton, least of all himself, so Addisson was much less inclined to simply let rude comments about him slide. Her reaction wouldn’t make their opinions of him any worse, couldn’t strain a relationship that hardly existed in the first place. When they said things like, “Gotta keep my eye on that ugly mutant. Can’t wait for the day it snaps so I can shoot it in the head,” she only barely refrained from placing a 10mm round between the guy’s eyes, carefully but with gusto.  
  
Instead she swallowed the sudden hot lump in her throat and approached the man, seething but almost at a loss for words.  
  
“Hey. Did I just hear you say something about my friend?” she asked, her voice light but with a depth of emotion that probably wasn’t all that well hidden. (Which was fine; if they were going to be passive-aggressive, they’d get the same back and more.)  
  
The man didn’t look surprised to see her there, although his friend (an off-duty guard, she thought) looked a little uneasy at either her sudden appearance or the slight _murder_ on her face.  
  
_“Friend,”_ the man repeated with a scathing laugh. “Right. I’m sure that’s what you’ll be thinking when it turns on you. Y’know I heard they eat humans. You gonna let it eat you when it gets tired of playing babysitter?”  
  
Addisson’s shoulders were unspeakably tense, like her arms were desperate to clock this guy and wrap themselves protectively around her at the same time. “Fawkes would never…” she said, trying to sound indignant but knowing that even if she kept her voice steady it would just sound like a childish denial.  
  
“Don’t worry, I’ll get revenge for you,” the man offered magnanimously, hand casually resting on his holstered pistol.  
  
There was no safe way to respond to that. Trying to assert that Fawkes wasn’t like his mutant brothers would sound weak, and nobody would accept that it wasn’t a biased answer. Just shooting the guy would land her in marginally more trouble than it was worth. But Addisson was desperate not to let this shitbag have the last word, so before she turned and stalked off she found herself growling, “If he gets _me_ , not a one of _you_ is making it out alive.”  
  
In retrospect it wasn’t the smartest thing to say to someone who already clearly didn’t care for either of them, but if she couldn’t make this man be nice then she was at least going to drill the fear of god into him. (It seemed to work too; for the rest of her time there, that particular asshole didn’t come within earshot of her again.)  
  
If that was the only instance, Addisson likely would have gotten over it. One bad apple wouldn’t ruin the bunch for her, and she mostly liked the population of Megaton. But unfortunately it was only the only time she felt strongly enough to confront the speaker about it. Less violent comments were becoming more common, and she wondered if it was because her would-be avenger was spreading his bullshit when she wasn’t around. (Probably at Moriarty’s.)  
  
“It’s probably just a matter of time,” she heard from around the corner of the supply depot. “Maybe they all start out nice enough.”  
  
She didn’t confront them; just bit her tongue til it almost bled and waited in a shadow until they’d moved on.  
  
“How’s she control him?” someone else wondered, down by the restaurant, smoking a cigarette one dusky evening.  
  
A friend of theirs hummed. “Maybe some kind of animal skill, like with her dog.”  
  
She almost thought these particular townspeople would have listened if she tried to explain, but the idea that she controlled either of her companions with some sort of wasteland whisperer ability was sadly silly and it made her too tired to bother, and she moved on.  
  
“He’s just scary,” she later heard a child say to another. “He’s so big and his face is creepy and he sounds mad.”  
  
Addisson couldn’t really be upset at the kid about their fairly valid opinion. Objectively, they’d hit the nail on the head. If you didn’t know Fawkes, his looks would easily overshadow anything else about him because for most people his appearance was a dead-end on the road to seeing him as a person. You’d never learn that he was kind, that he loved reading and was fond of children. You’d never guess that he was softly haunted by phantom memories from before the gruesome change. You’d never know that he was loyal beyond measure.  
  
The kid’s commentary was almost the worst of them all. Sighing, Addisson finished up her business and headed home, where Fawkes was sitting cross-legged in the living room, grooming Dogmeat.  
  
“Did she take them?” the mutant asked, looking up at her with what passed for a smile when she entered.  
  
“Uh, yeah,” she replied, referencing Moira and the half-broken appliances they’d scrounged for her last time they’d gone out. But Addisson wasn’t thinking about Moira right now; she was thinking about the way that Fawkes looked anything _but_ frightening to her, sitting on the floor with a lap full of shepherd-mutt. She was thinking about the kid who would probably never take the chance to see this side of him, and the asshole (maybe ass _holes)_ looking for an excuse to put a bullet in his beautiful brain. “Hey, um. Do you wanna go out somewhere?”  
  
Fawkes gave her a quizzical look. “Where do you want to go?”  
  
“I dunno,” Addisson said, crossing her arms and hoping to look nonchalant. “I just thought, you know, maybe we could go sight-seeing. There’s still a ton of places around here I’ve never had an excuse to go. Or… maybe I could show you some of the cool places I found before you got out.”  
  
It was pretty clear that Fawkes didn’t believe she just suddenly felt like being his own personal tour guide to the old American capitol, but he didn’t do more than slightly raise a hairless eyebrow, and he didn’t say, ‘but we just got back.’ Maybe that was one of the things she liked so much about him: he understood and accepted her whims, even if he didn’t entirely know why.  
  
“I’d like to see whatever you wish to show me.”  
  
She sighed in relief, though she tried her best not to make it seem so obvious. “Alright, great,” she said, grinning with as much genuine energy as she could muster. “Let me just swap some of my gear and check in with Wadsworth."   
  
With the exception of a few moments of distraction a la Dogmeat, who seemed to realize she was feeling a bit down (and wasn’t bound by social convention like Fawkes managed to be), Addisson was changed and ready to go pretty quickly. She told Wadsworth they were headed out again, grabbed a purified water for the road, and led the way out into the town and back out of it again.  
  
She started in the direction of downtown, figuring something would catch their interest. If it didn’t, they could at least check in at Underworld and catch up with the ghouls, who at least treated Fawkes better than most humans.  
  
Glancing over her shoulder to the place where the mutant always followed, Addisson took another look at him. Try as she might, she couldn’t see him as a danger, or as strange. Not when she’d seen so much else to be afraid of. Even with his gatling pack strapped to his broad back, even towering over her (despite the fact that she was tall for a girl), even with that perpetual scowl on his face, he didn’t resemble any of the wasteland’s threats. The fact that he wasn’t trying to kill her probably made a big difference, but for people who spent most of their time behind steel walls maybe the difference just wasn’t stark enough.  
  
Though she’d glanced away before too long, Fawkes caught her look. “Is there something the matter, my friend?”  
  
Addisson cringed at being noticed, but she rolled along with it. “I was just thinking about, uh, your skin,” she lied, pulling at a random thought about Fawkes which she’d had some time before. “I mean, it just looks kind of dry. Maybe you should drink more water.” Throwing a smile at him over her shoulder, she paused to dig around in her backpack for a bottle-- a ‘dirty’ water she’d normally boil before drinking herself-- and handed it over to him.  
  
He took the bottle (dainty in his hand, like anything smaller than a rifle), and looked at it and then at her, as if unsure. “Meta humans don’t require as much as humans,” he told her. “You should keep it for yourself.”  
  
She shook her head. “Just because you can survive on a bottle a week doesn’t mean it’s good for you,” she countered. She’d read some of the data back in the vault, so she knew mutants could get by with very little sustenance for quite a long time before their bodies started to show any signs of malnourishment, but she wondered if Fawkes knowing his limits caused him to be a little less careful with himself than he could or _should_ be. “Y’know, you don’t have to live with the bare minimum. You deserve… better.”  
  
Fawkes closed his mouth, an action most likened to someone pursing their lips, and she knew she was being judged. After all, any food or water he partook of would be less food or water for his _fragile, tiny, human companion._ But Addisson was a good scavenger and almost always had more than enough caps for trade, and he had to know that she wasn’t going to starve just because he took a little more for himself-- especially when she was offering. (And this was less offering than insisting.)  
  
Sighing, he opened his mouth again and uncapped the bottle, drinking it down like the desert surrounding them. Addisson smirked in triumph.  
  
“I’ve got more,” she said, shrugging her backpack further up her shoulders. “Just let me know when you want ‘em.”  
  
“...Thank you,” Fawkes said, nodding, his voice low and gentle.  
  
Addisson waved a silent ‘welcome’ and continued picking her way across the gravelly hilltop they’d stopped on. She was just glad he hadn’t fought her about it, because she knew he had a tendency to be unnecessarily chivalrous to her. It was sweet, but in this case it wouldn’t do any good. The more she thought about it, the more adamant she was. Nobody else was going to take care of Fawkes; not his so-called brothers, not the wasteland citizens he sometimes fought to protect, and probably not the ghouls of Underworld, even with their comfortably neutral attitude toward him. And Fawkes himself was too busy watching out for _her_ (and Dogmeat) to bother thinking how best he could live his own life.  
  
Maybe making sure he ate and drank enough wasn’t that big of a deal. Maybe it didn’t actually matter; maybe super mutants just had dry skin by nature, and dry scratchy voices, and dry red eyes. Maybe all the extra food and water would be a waste, just resources they could have donated to needy humans. But _maybe_ Addisson didn’t care, if it made Fawkes feel better at all, if it made him feel a little more human to sit and eat with her at mealtimes (even if he didn’t _have to)._ And she would happily take watch at night so he had a chance to sleep (even if he didn’t _have to)._ There were a lot of things people did that weren’t strictly necessary to their survival, and she didn’t see why that shouldn’t apply to him too, if it made life even just a little bit more enjoyable.  
  
She imagined that if the townsfolk in Megaton got their heads out of their asses, they’d at least see that Fawkes could be a valuable ally to the city. If they weren’t so blinded by fear and prejudice, they could have a tireless guardian watching their backs. But even then she doubted they’d see him as a _person,_ deserving of anything more than it took to keep him alive. She wondered if any of them would have let him out of his cage (other than as a convenient means to the GECK).  
  
“What troubles you?” Fawkes asked, which was unusual without prompt, and made Addisson realize she’d gotten lost in her thoughts and slowed to a stroll.  
  
“Oh, nothing,” she said automatically. “I’m just glad--” _‘that I got you out of that vault,’_ she thought, but refrained from saying. She tried not to bring the place up more than necessary, assuming it carried more negative memories than Fawkes would want to relive. “--that we met. It can be so quiet out here when you’re by yourself. And, y’know, I was kind of tired of being the ‘lone wanderer’.”  
  
Was that too real? Fawkes was looking at her like she’d grown an extra head too suddenly, mouth open (teeth too, not just his too-taught lips) like he was going to say something but wasn’t sure what. Maybe it _was_ too real. They’d expressed their appreciation to each other through their constant presence and watching each others’ backs, and Fawkes had certainly been more eloquent than almost anyone else Addisson knew, back when they’d first met. There was no doubting that he was grateful she’d sprung him from his jail cell. But she… maybe hadn’t exactly told him, in words, how happy she was to have him following her.  
  
“I’m… glad you share the sentiment,” he said after a moment of staring at her. The muscles in his face shifted upwards under the stretched cellophane of his skin, the oval of his mouth edging up into a smile. “I have hoped that the _noise_ inherent to my size has not irritated you.”  
  
She puffed air at him. “You’re actually a lot lighter-footed than you’d expect.” He didn’t budge in the slightest when she shoved at him in a friendly way, which probably undermined her statement a little, but not enough to keep Fawkes from continuing to smile at her. She grinned right back, hoping he understood (without her having to completely vocalize it) that she liked his stature, his bulk, the way she could tell he was always at her back just from the shifting of the ground under his solid weight. She didn’t like him _despite_ his size and shape; his body and whatever aspects were inherent to it-- those didn’t detract from his worth as a person, regardless of what some people might think.  
  
Of course, she didn’t say any of that, and he didn’t respond, and that was just fine because Addisson didn’t want to have to explain exactly _why_ she was suddenly being so mushy. (Relatively mushy, anyway.) Fawkes was neither deaf nor dumb, so he’d probably hear Megaton’s unkind gossip eventually. Maybe warning him would have been the polite thing to do, but… not yet. She just wanted him to have as much time as possible in comfortable ignorance before he had to become aware that anyone thought lesser of him than he deserved.  
  
So maybe tomorrow they would sweat the small stuff-- gossip, the judgements of people too short-sighted to see someone’s true worth behind what made them different. But for today they were going to go tour the Washington Monument, bask in its size and appreciate the way it loomed over them, a testament to giant ambitions. 


End file.
